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Microsoft Compiled HTML Help - Wikipedia

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Software help file format by Microsoft

Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM) is a Microsoft proprietary online help format, consisting of a collection of HTML pages, an index and other navigation tools. The files are compressed and deployed in a binary format with the extension .CHM. The format was intended to succeed Microsoft WinHelp.

Although the format was designed by Microsoft, it has been successfully reverse-engineered and is now supported by many document viewers.

CHM was introduced as the successor to Microsoft WinHelp with the release of Windows 95 OSR 2.5. Within the Windows NT family, the CHM file support is introduced in Windows NT 4.0[3][4] and is still supported in Windows 11.[5]

Month Year Description February 1996 Microsoft announces plans to stop development of WinHelp and start development on HTML Help. August 1997 HTML Help 1.0 (HH 1.0) is released with Internet Explorer 4. February 1998 HTML Help 1.1a ships with Windows 98. January 2000 HTML Help 1.3 ships with Windows 2000. July HTML Help 1.32 releases with Internet Explorer 5.5 and Windows Me. October 2001 HTML Help 1.33 releases with Internet Explorer 6 and Windows XP. March At the WritersUA (formerly WinWriters) conference, Microsoft announces plans for a new help platform, Help 2, which is also HTML based. January 2003 Microsoft decides not to release Microsoft Help 2 as a general Help platform.

Microsoft has announced that they do not intend to add any new features to HTML Help.[6]

Help is delivered as a binary file with the .chm extension. It contains a set of HTML files, a hyperlinked table of contents, and an index file. The file format has been reverse-engineered and documentation of it is freely available.[7][8]

The file starts with bytes "ITSF" (in ASCII), for "Info-Tech Storage Format", which is the internal name given by Microsoft to the generic storage file format used for CHM files.[9]

CHM files support the following features:

The Microsoft Reader's .lit file format is a modification of the HTML Help CHM format. CHM files are sometimes used for e-books.[11]

In addition to Microsoft Windows, the following apps support CHM:

Name Operating system Website Okular Windows, Linux, Unix-like okular.kde.org

invent.kde.org/graphics/okular

Uses hh.exe on Windows Calibre Windows, macOs, Linux, calibre-ebook.com

calibre on GitHub

Sumatra PDF Windows www.sumatrapdfreader.org

sumatrapdf on GitHub

GnoCHM Linux, BSD GnoCHM on SourceForge CHM View None/Uncompiled chmviewkit on GitHub kchmviewer Windows, Linux ulduzsoft.com/kchmviewer/ KCHM Linux, BSD, Solaris KCHM on SourceForge CHMPane Windows, macOS, Linux CHMPane on SourceForge CHMate Neue iOS, iPadOS, visionOS CHMate Neue on iTunes iChm iOS, macOS iChm on iTunes Discontinued ChmPlus iOS, iPadOS, macOS, visionOS ChmPlus on iTunes Chmox macOS chmox.sourceforge.net

Chmox on SourceForge

Clearview macOS Clearview on iTunes DisplayCHM Linux linux-apps.com/p/998057

Microsoft's HTML Help Workshop generates CHM files by instructions stored in a HTML Help project file, which bears a .HHP file name extension and is a specialized form of INI file.[12]

Lazarus and Free Pascal provide a doxygen-like tool for CHM generation and a separate command-line compiler called chmcmd.

The official viewer in Microsoft Windows (hh.exe) can decompile a CHM file. So can Microsoft HTML Help Workshop and 7-Zip. Calibre and arCHMage can convert CHM into another format.

  1. ^ Techtonik, Anatoly (11 April 2006). "application/vnd.ms-htmlhelp". Retrieved 7 March 2012.
  2. ^ "Microsoft HTML Help 1.4". Windows Dev Center. Microsoft. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
  3. ^ "Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-055 - Critical". docs.microsoft.com. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  4. ^ "Full Disclosure: HtmlHelp - .CHM File Heap Overflow". seclists.org. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  5. ^ "[SOLVED] Windows 10 CHM Help Files showing up blank. - Spiceworks". community.spiceworks.com. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  6. ^ "Microsoft HTML Help Downloads". Microsoft. Retrieved 6 March 2012.
  7. ^ Wise, Paul; Wing, Jed (2005). "Unofficial (Preliminary) HTML Help Specification". Retrieved 15 August 2012.
  8. ^ Palade, Alexandru (2005). "Archive::Chm". Retrieved 22 July 2014.
  9. ^ "Virus Bulletin :: Chamber of horrors". www.virusbulletin.com. Retrieved 2022-01-05.
  10. ^ "INFO: Limited Unicode Support in HTML Help". Microsoft. 11 April 2001. Archived from the original on 13 March 2016. Retrieved 17 March 2012.
  11. ^ Salomon, David; Motta, Giovanni; Bryant, David (CON) (2009). Handbook of Data Compression (5th, illustrated ed.). Springer. ISBN 978-1-84882-902-2.
  12. ^ Wise, Paul; Wing, Jed (2005). "Unofficial (Preliminary) HTML Help Specification INI formats". Retrieved 1 February 2018.

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